capacity of the cell that has to be
stocked. Everything would then be limited to a judicious selection from
the heap of eggs.

Should this idea occur to him, the reader must hasten to reject it.
Nothing could be more false, as the most casual reference to anatomy
will show. The female reproductive apparatus of the Hymenoptera
consists generally of six ovarian tubes, something like glove-fingers,
divided into bunches of three and ending in a common canal, the
oviduct, which carries the eggs outside. Each of these glove-fingers is
fairly wide at the base, but tapers sharply towards the tip, which is
closed. It contains, arranged in a row, one after the other, like beads
on a string, a certain number of eggs, five or six for instance, of
which the lower ones are more or less developed, the middle ones
halfway towards maturity, and the upper ones very rudimentary. Every
stage of evolution is here represented, distributed regularly from
bottom to top, from the verge of maturity to the vague outlines of the
embryo. The sheath clasps its string of ovules so closely that any
inversion of the order is impossible. Besides, an inversion would
result in a gross absurdity: the replacing of a riper egg by another in
an earlier stage of development.

Therefore, in each ovarian tube, in each glove-finger, the emergence of
the eggs occurs according to the order governing their arrangement in
the common sheath; and any other sequence is absolutely impossible.
Moreover, at the nesting-period, the six ovarian sheaths, one by one
and each in its turn, have at their base an egg which in a very short
time swells enormously. Some hours or even a day before the laying,
that egg by itself represents or even exceeds in bulk the whole of the
ovigerous apparatus. This is the egg which is on the point of being
laid. It is about to descend into the oviduct, in its proper order, at
its proper time; and the mother has no power to make another take its
place. It is this egg, necessarily this egg and no other, that will
presently be laid upon the provisions, whether these be a mess of honey
or a live prey; it alone is ripe, it alone lies at the entrance to the
oviduct; none of the others, since they are farther back in the row and
not at the right stage of development, can be substituted at this
crisis. Its birth is inevitable.

What will it yield, a male or a female? No lodging has been prepared,
no food collected for it; and yet both food and lodgin